Why You Should not Buy Chinese Tablets?

We have seen a lot of people talking in favor of the Chinese tablets which come at a modest price and can be bought by anyone, even those with very limited budget.

However, it must be taken into consideration that these tablets are not reliable and should be bought only when you are on an extremely strict budget.

Below listed drawbacks are valid for not only the tablets but for cheaper Chinese smartphones too. Let’s go straight away to the reasons, why these tablets are not worth buying:

Illegal unlicensed software

To start off, many of these tablets come without official, licensed software from Google which means they are made illegally. This means that their software is vulnerable to more viruses and of course, going to face performance issues and lagginess.

The software issues will definitely increase and the device gets even more laggy in the future, since software updates are usually hard to find,

Cheap build quality, unreliability & stolen design

Most of these tablets come with poor build quality so get ready to bid farewell to them incase you’ve dropped them. Their designs are similar and stolen especially from the iPad (I’ve already seen so many of them). They don’t usually come with warranties and after sale support so chances are narrowed that you’ll be able to repair or exchange them in case of any hardware issues.

No software updates or access to Play Store

Since the companies making these tablets do all this just for financial gain, they never ‘waste’ money on software updates to fix issues or updating the software. And because of the stolen & unlicensed software, they usually don’t have access to the Play Store for downloading apps so downloading your favorite apps will definitely become a headache.

Though you can download APKs for various apps, but again, that’s not legal.

Bad specifications

This was expected, wasn’t it? Because of no access to application stores, poor cameras and only limited pre-installed apps, these tablets will bore you soon. Those ports you see on them might just be there just for the purpose of show-offing.

Performance issues, display & touch input

This is possibly the biggest drawback. To save manufacturing costs, these tablets have low RAMs and aged & underpowered processors. This will cause the tablet to have performance issues which will only worsen with time. Battery life isn’t that great either. Their displays are usually washed out and touchscreens are usually resistive so they actually promise to make your user-experience ‘memorable’.

Low resale value

After a year or two, these products will most probably be rendered unusable so on reselling them, you’ll only get a fraction of your money back as no-one would like to spend their fortunes on a cheap, unreliable and used device.

Conclusion

And all these reasons apply not only to Chinese tablets, but also to all the other cheap Chinese devices too. This article is only scratching the surface and listing the most important points, but you’ll learn about even more trade-offs as you’ll progress in your journey with the tablet.

Its always recommended that you save some more money and buy a good, reliable and branded tablet from a well-known company (like Google Nexus 7). Although not all of the Chinese tablets are like this, but most of them are so why not save your money and make a sensible decision?

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Basit

While this holds true for most of the devices in the market, one may get the MIPS tablets from http://www.ainovo.com. Though the device display doesn’t match to that of higher-end/expensive devices, the performance you get for this price surpasses other tablets in the market.

SHOPEX.PK

I invite the author and all you people to buy Chinese Quality tabs from us and simply learn more about chinese tablets before commenting about them.
Survey with atleast 100 people before passing such a statement.WE HAVE BEEN SELLING THEM FOR QUITE SOME TIME AND DEFECT RATE IS ONLY 3% .We Offer FREE CASH ON DELIVERY ACROSS PAKISTAN

1. You are quite right, I bought an android from CHINA brand and was able to use only for 20 to 30 days.

2. The question is that “Google Nexus 7” is not available for our country (Pakistan), so what to do? Please ask Badar Khushnood (Google Consultant) to arrange availability of Google Nexus 7 tablet in Pakistan

pataykhan

I own a chinese tablet and pretty happy with it. I recommend Ainol Elf or Mars, priced at 10k to 12k, pretty good for the price. I think most of the things you have mentioned are way exaggerated. Let me go through them…

– Illegal unlicensed software
This is not true. It doesn’t include any propriety stuff. Simple Google open source software (AOSP). Updates are pretty frequent too, if your device is current generation.

– No software updates or access to Play Store
This is again because of AOSP. Perhaps you know that CyanogenMod doesn’t come with any Google stuff as well. Installing Google Apps is no problem though. Multiple packages are available online that make installing a breeze.

Bad specifications
– This is again an impression that if something is chinese it should have bad specifications. Just look for AllWinner A10 chipset specifications on the internet, and you will see how powerful it is. It is even more powerful that Galaxy SII CPU/GPU. Besides it offers FullHDx2 HDMI output, USB host mode (even the most expensive devices don’t offer USB host mode), USB Mass Storage, etc.

– Performance issues, display & touch input
Performance is upto the mark as I mentioned above. Display and touch have some issues. Agreed. Again see the price :)

– Low resale value
When you buy something for 10k-12k, what do you think to resale it at?? :)

In summary, I see this tablet for Kids / Grandparents, who don’t have access to any computing platform. This offers them the complete internet / media experience at a very low price. Ofcourse these gadgets won’t appeal to youth though :)

+100000. 100% agree with you. that’s exactly what i was about to comment.

Ali Amjad

A very good reply indeed. You reply is way better than the blog itself. I seriously was thinking the same thing. The blog seems kinda biased.

kamrananvaar

pataykhan well said, Azeem Ullah Hassan does,nt know anything about open source, he has,nt even do research before posting, pro pakistani needs to have some standards as to whose articles it posts

hippo99

i think the author know nothing about tablets and the current boom in Chinese technology, they have become far superior now , built quality and design has become outstanding ,not only this big companies like asus, lenovo , acer and other are now started using Chinese made processors in their tablets that are now made in china , so all n all Chinese tablets rocks “if” you know the technology and have a sense of buying the correct one by specs , i my self using a Chinese tablet for over an year and have no issue with it and built quality is very good.

Muhammad Khalid Farooq

Not the Fact!
Chinese Tablets like Ainol Novo, Hero Tab are very cool design, software updates, better screen results.
Only cameras are not so sophisticated.
But in 1/4th or 1/3rd of the price of ipad, Htc or samsung these tabs are much affordable and I think better.

jawad zaib

i totally disagree with the author of this post chinese tablets are great in price and good in specs like in 12000 you get 1.5ghz dual core agm ram and 8gb memory and capacitive ips panel you can get a branded on like these specs in 50000-60000 thousands so why waste that much money for example take a look at thishttp://gametechguru.blogspot.com/2012/07/ainol-novo7-elf-ii.html

Ainol Novo 7 Aurora is the best China Tablet to date, Lots of custom Roms and Mods, Rooting, Unrooting, Cyanogen Mod – Man everything is available for this tablet on the Internet, and yes its a Chinese Tablet. :D

For everyone commenting that this post is not right, I wrote in the very last line that ‘not all of the Chinese tablets are like this’ and by that I meant that some tablets like Ainol etc. are good too. And if you’ll buy them online, you can get replacement warranty too. I never criticised EVERY Chinese tablet in the market.

Pakistan Classified Ads

If something that one thinks worth in limited amount of money then why not one should buy it.

Azeem Ullah

Of course. In the end it all depends on the user. But my advice is that people should save some more money and buy a refined product, instead of wasting everything. But the users have to decide whats right for them and what they want.

the author iss telling crap…
there are a lot of excellent chineeses tablets now available and the issues author mentioned are just bullshit i own one and its excellent

Anwer Ali Baloch, Hub, Balochistan.

Here is my personal Experience. Please Note that I am writing this with my Real Name, and Location as a proof of my Identity and NOT with a fake Nick:

Few days ago I bought a QMobile, E995 Knight. Now I am feeling that perhaps I traded my Rs.8800. for NOTHING. The touch screen is poor in response. I visited the official website of Qmobile for Application & Games Download but simply got NOTHING. Now, what I have in my hand is a piece of “GARBAGE” which is not even worth few hundreds.

Woooooo Ainol Novo 7 Aurora this tablet rocks in specs. Beats ipad in both price and specs gonna buy a used One lol

Hassan Jamil

I think you should write this post 8 months back, Now Chinese Tablets like Ainol GEMEI and few others are awesome price ranges from 10k to 22k

Altaf

The writer hit the entire china product industry without realizing that only some products fall in the categories he mentioned.

Chinese products are of every quality, even Apple devices are made in China. It’s upto a consumer which quality grade he choses.

For illegal softwares, I dis-agree. I haven’t come across any single chinese device that has illegal software. They always use open source software, which are perfectly legal to use in any way one wants to.

sorry to say, but disappointed in the author and his research. Seems he had some bad experience or some one was discussing these things in corridor. He just picked up and wrote without doing any real research.

Azeem Ullah

By ‘Chinese’ I meant product made by chinese companies.

Altaf

Unfortunately, you generalized, which is a wrong approach.

like I said, many manufacturing products are Chinese and are of high quality. The problem is that, if standards are not enforced in our country, then we cannot blame chinese products for that.

It’ll be nice if you can show statistics as how many products are made by chinese companies and how many of them are ‘useless’ as you say.

I would ask you that how many products you tested yourself?

It’s just that you may knew 10-15 products in this category and you tagged the whole chinese product industry with low quality products, which is unfortunate.

Moreover, chinese never claim these products to be of high quality, so even if they are not good quality, China at least mentioned it’s quality grade etc.

I personally think this article shouldn’t have been written this way.

If it would have written to suggest people what to consider while buying chinese products, that would have added value.

Faraz

I dont agree with this. Because i bought Chinees Tablet from China at a very cheap price. It has been almost a year im using it, playing games, watching HD video and its working wounderfully well and even if after some tym it creats any problem i’ll think my money is paid off. As for as unofficial firmware usage is concerned, Let me tell u one thing in most of the android handsets Official Firmware sucks and i had been using customized firmware which worked absolutly well with increased performance and also give u option to customized ur set way you want by roming ur handset. So the moral of the story is Official and un-official is just a matter of words or we can say legal and illegal also just words. Its my personal experience because im hardcore user of android and symbian devices.

Adeel

Are these Ainol novo tablets available in Lahore..i.e. at Hafeez center etc.

Khalid Naveed

You are right Jawed Zaib!! The writer doesn’t have any idea about the Chinese tab market and just wrote out against it.
I bought cherry challenger tablet PC from Symbios online shop. And I am pretty much satisfied about the money I spent on purchasing Cherry challenger. It’s not necessary that we buy Chinese gadgets when we have budget constraints, but the thing is when we can buy quality and competitive specifications in a quality gadget like cherry challenger then why to go for expensive gadgets?
As far as Illegal unlicensed softwares are concerned, in cherry challenger I got android Ice cream Sandwich which is nowadays considered the top selling software plus not virus supported at all. This supports Google play store applications as well. In addition, cherry.pk is offering various supportive softwares.
Coming to the Specifications of cherry challenger. It is loaded with 1.2 GHz of processor and Micro SD card supportive, up to 32 GB plus also supports skype video calling.
As far as anyone is happy with such gadgets, why should to sell this gadget to check its resale value? Why do spend lot of money when product like cherry is satisfying my requirements.

They provide 3 months replacement warranty for around rupee 2000 extra to let the buyer have peace of mind.

Ainol Aurora II and ELF II , are the best products I have seen so far. Their built Quality is fantastic in terms of durability and portability.

One can get these tablets at home by Ordering online and contact the wholesale distributor.

Contact information is available on website and they will deliver the product using TCS and you have to make the payment at doorstep.

NOTE

1. Ainol products are available in two prices. One without warranty and other with 3 months replacement and 6 months service warranty.

2. Only Different between Aurora and ELF versions is their Scree. Though ELF got really got contrast and responsive screen but Aurora got LG IPS Screen. Its the same screen used in iPAD/iPhone. So I recommend to get Aurora II

azeem bhai many points (wich you mention above) also apply on well known brand product wich you are recommending.
cheap and built quality.look at Samsung built quality plastics toys
stolen design”Samsung also known as copy cat.
bad spec” many well known company release their device with horrible specs and with high price tag.
software update” if you buying high price and well known device its not mean you will get software update look at android’s big boy Samsung galaxy s never get ics update
low resale value “who told you that well known companies product have very good resale value only those devices wich are famous(samsung galaxy s2 etc) have good resale value other get a** kick

Hayat Khan

the chines markets is now stable on the world, and he making different qualities for any country, and he will make a 3rd class quality for us, therefor i think the regional things should be arranging like Nokia N9, see in this link http://www.pakistangsm.com/Nokia_N9.html

Abaid

100% agreed that author wrote this post without even experiencing any chinese tablet himself, he was just envious that now people who can’t afford high end expensive mobiles, tablets have the chinese tablets with specs better than the branded ones.
Delete this post you idiot…………

Saad

i totally agree with the phrase “envious that now people who can’t afford high end expensive mobiles, tablets have the chinese tablets with specs better than the branded ones”
perfectly suits the brand concious people.
But man be polite tough :)

Umair

Either the author has difficulty expressing himself in English or he does not know the market reality.

The term “Chinese Tablets” is TRUE for almost all tables. Be it Samsung, Asus, Ipad or no name brands.

The author should not buy any tablet because thay are all Chinese.

If the tablet has Android then there is NO question of illegal software becasue Android is opensource.

If you are going to buy crap chinese, american or japanese then bad things are going to happen with anything. There are some good chinese brands like Ainol that even sell in the western world.

So, please don’t listen to the article. He seriously needs education in Technology and Market realities.

the chines markets is now stable on the world, and he making different qualities for any country, and he will make a 3rd class quality for us, therefor i think the regional things should be arranging like Nokia N9,

Kam

I must agree with the author of this article. In the past year I bought two, said to be good quality, tablets from China, and both ended up either broken or flawed in various ways.

People here mention the Ainol Aurora Novo 7: Go to the forum of this tablet’s users and you will see 50% positive, and 50% negative comments including problems with overheating, poor wi-fi etc. For some it is fixed, for others not. And the fixing itself requires work from the user end – this type of product is definitely better for the computer-savvy types, not the general public who know little about ROMs and things.

I agree: Why buy cheap? Why not save a little more and buy quality at a higher price, but know it will be more stable and have a better warranty, including having better customer support.

Neammer

Go to the users of famous brand names. You’ll see complaints.

Sometimes there are so many complaints from well established brands that they have recall their product. But that happens in the west.

It’s just that established brands spend huge amounts of money to train your mind to like them.

Dude, there is something called “defect rate” ALL, i say that again, ALL Factories in the world belonging to ANY brand have defect rate.

Quality companies have lower defect rate than others.

Every 1000 products made by Sony Japan will have few that will not work at all, some will have minor defects.

Please learn about market realities. Become a savvy consumer.

I am not with Ainol but I know they have 3 months replacement warranty. If it does not work in those three months get a new one from Ainol Pakistan.

Sajib

Do you how many ipads were taken back by apple for poor battery performance and over heating ?

MERiAMMI

my mummy says, it depend on your back pocket, if you wanna buy iphone on Rs5000 than what would you expect!:)

funny clip

china products are everywhere

Zaheer Abbas

To be honest, none of the reasons are true.

waheedtheone

Azeem sb nice article.

Wajahat Ahmed

Does this case is same for the Tab made by Pakistan Miltary Complex ??????

i dont agree with the draw backs of chinese tablets …they are right but for most people these dont advantages dont matter…. for example i use tabblet to read books and specially pdf books and i use android tablet which i purchased in 8000 rs with usb key board and i am more than happy

You may buy AINOL, its the largest Chinese Manufacturer, and it also supplies to Western World.

Ahsan

Dear author
after wasting a lot of time on the article i was wishing to see the data on which you based the results but is see nothing.. so without any data any name of Chinese tablet manufacturer how are you saying so many things with such a confidence ?
btw u seem to be an apple guy ? i LMAO at u saying they copied ipad designs..
kid don’t write again .. u are seriously ill informed and ill acceptable to write on such a good blog…

Ali

show-offing should have been showing-off

help me

it is true and as mobile phones have mastered our market which are of low quality same will be the case with those tablets

Shumaila Jaffer

i bought Samsung galaxy tab from thailand… its china phone. and my brother is using actual galaxy note but he cant make difference of performance… no touch issues … no display or anyother issue.

the software it uses is android it self and we can access to play store and other apps same as in note and tablet. i forgot to mention i already have Samsung tablet. and i m pretty much satisfied with chinese note. its not lagging or anything

We should not only say it wont be good just bcaz its chinese …

Ali

PTCL’s GIS program stood out amongst more than 100,000 others worldwide programs for its outstanding use of GIS technology in the existing network.

straight_Talker.

THE WRITER OF THIS OIECE IS LIER, AND PERHAPS AN APPLE TOUT.
This is complete bullshit. I have had several Chinese Tablets and found them to be at par with Apple. there is no problem with software. I am sure he has never purchased one rupee worth software himself and talks of stolen soft ware and lack of support.
This article is a disgrace.

RG.Bashir

you are right bro…

FalconAssault2012

Yea …agree

DevilMind

so true…so its time to hang the article writer because of public vote :D
i can bet writer is a home sick person who only sits on PC whole day & read gadget reviews from USA sites & thinks China is a shit communist jungle as like Vietnam…

AN IGNORANT MANS RANT. HE KNOWS ZERO ABOUT TABLETS OR PHONES.
POSSIBLY HE IS AN INDIAN HIDING BEHIND A FALSE MUSLIM NAME.
PLEASE GO BACK TO YOUR PIG FARM AND HAUL SOME MORE COW DUNG AND LEAVE REVIEWS TO THE KNOWLEDGABLE.

AN IGNORANT MANS RANT. HE KNOWS ZERO ABOUT TABLETS OR PHONES.
POSSIBLY HE IS AN INDIAN HIDING BEHIND A FALSE MUSLIM NAME.
PLEASE GO BACK TO YOUR PIG FARM AND HAUL SOME MORE COW DUNG AND LEAVE REVIEWS TO THE KNOWLEDGABLE.

RG.Bashir

20 words.

the whole story is a complete crap…. so guys don’t worry and don’t listen to this person, go for China made tablet PC’s,,,, they are awesome, the author of this article is MAD……

Saad

Its just a matter of cost vs benefits.
If you are spending 60k+ only for browsing or playing casual games, in the name of branded apple, think again…

Xee

what a load of crap.

Hamza

I think you are a Google tablet distributor.. Thats why youve placed an add in a wrong way.. Let people decide..

AbuSufyan

i just have smelled bullshit in above article..
he is typing from Chinese laptop (HP and Dell are officially china licensed for Asia Pacific) and not in favor of other Chinese gadgets..

We dont expect much from 7K – 10K PKR for Chinese Tablet..
If u dont like it pass it on to the kids… and go for another one ;)

Awais Niazi

Well I agree with you for ALMOST ALL CHINESE BRANDS OTHER THAN AINOL…! I own 2 ainol tablets novo 7 elf-II and Hero-II and am extremely happy with them. Heavy software updates are given! Quiet a “decent” official support and outstanding unofficial support is there for this make (ainol that is)… Ainol has changed my concept of “brand name”. When you have got the internet, you are free to do a good research before buying anything. That’s what should be done in case of tablets! Do good research about custom roms, support (official and unofficial)… It makes life much easier. I have also realized that brands like HTC are mere names and they aren’t doing anything special either. I mean specially in case of Pakistan where you don’t have any official HTC setup… Ainol is a good brand and I may try some other chinese brand too in few days. JUST DO RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING. Get yourself free from being looted in the name of “brand name”

taha

can you tell me the band which i can buy in low cost

hanza ijaz

well i bought cherry cruze it rocks in specs but low on internal storage i use sd card though its ram is 1 gb dual core allwinner a10 1.5 ghz processor i am very happy with it admin wrote crap some chinese tablets rules!!!!!!!

ahmad

I decided to buy a tab round about 3 months ago, of Ainol. Keeping the point “made in china” in my mind, i bought the tablet having best specs, Quadcore,2gb ram, good gpu, i bought ainol novo 8 discover. I was so astonished to see that all of of its specs were damn true, it is freakingly fast(2 gb of ram, mmmmm), Quite frankly im a hardcore gamer:P and i have all the the high end games in my tab and they run smoothly. With 5000 mAh its battery is awesome.I play multiplayer games (100% brightness, wifi on, 100 % volume) and it is easily giong upto 5 hours! 16 rom is another plus.The only bad thing is that it a little bit heavy( maybe bcz of its aluminium back), but now i am used to it. Im having this tab since 3.5 months and it is working great Mashallah. So i honestly say that if you are thinking to buy any ainol or chinese tab, buy novo 8 discover.

rehman

i want any tablet of ainol novo in qist i should give double money if any one give me tablet in qist skype:abdul.rehman.mehar thnku

Scorpion

“Chinese” doesn’t mean bad in some casses, yes maybe some of them are stolen from iPad (like Ainol Novo 8 Discover) but forget the who stole who, and focuse on who’s better, I ordered “Ainol Novo 8 Discover” and I will order “iPad” soon too, and I’m happy on ordering “Ainol Novo 8 Discover”, it has good quality.. And again you should’ve mentioned that not all of them are “crap” “trash.. Did you know that there are famous companies which aren’t Chinese And are in China?

There are some models of tablets which are TRUE copy of another tablet , and you gonna save 200-500 dollars on BRAND NAME

Example, I bought a DVD player from Russian CO, and another famous brand DVD player from another factory ( I don’t remember it, but it was like BBR or something like that).. the difference was 500 Grivnas ! (50 euros) and I found some the famous brand DVD player in the Russian DVD player.. So that means item price doesn’t mean anything, but the quality does! and Chinese Doesnt mean crap again

Scorpion

Also I forgot to mention that if “iPad” had his operating system Android, I won’t buy it cause I will get Android device soon and I don’t need 2 same devices with same operating system..

Scorpion

Also, if you want to buy an Chinese tablet get Ainol Novo 8 Discover, games with very Hi-Res graphics lke Real Racing 3 and Need for Speed Most Wanted are working with no lag and at best quality..

hippo99

i think the author know nothing about tablets and the current boom in Chinese technology, they have become far superior now , built quality and design has become outstanding ,not only this big companies like asus, lenovo , acer and other are now started using Chinese made processors in their tablets that are now made in china , so all n all Chinese tablets rocks “if” you know the technology and have a sense of buying the correct one by specs , i my self using a Chinese tablet for over an year and have no issue with it and built quality is very good.